


Payment In Full

by imaginary_golux



Series: Life Debt [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Fluff, Life Debt, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 20:56:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7189895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Finn wakes up, finds his feet in the Resistance, and learns that Poe owes him a life debt. And Poe pines a lot.</p>
<p>This is the fault of ArielT, who egged me on, and was betaed by my ever-wonderful Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Payment In Full

On Yavin 4, they take their life debts _seriously_. Poe has ample opportunity, as he watches the days trickle by while Finn lies terribly still and the doctors bustle about him, pouring bacta on his dreadful injuries, to consider life debts. A person who rescues another, at the risk of his own life, without prior obligation or necessity, is considered - on Yavin 4 - to be more than honorable. Heroic. And sure, Finn needed a pilot when he rescued Poe, but there was no obligation to make him find and rescue BB-8, and with the droid the hope of the Resistance; and then, of course, he saved all their asses _again_ by dropping the shields on Starkiller Base. Yeah, Poe owes him a life debt, and he intends to pay it in full.

There are three ways, on Yavin 4, to pay a life debt. The simplest is to just pay the rescuer the value of the rescued person’s life, as appraised by a panel of three neutral parties. Poe is a skilled pilot, held rank in the Republic’s space force before coming to the Resistance, is the commander of the Resistance’s space force - he’d fetch a good price. But that option is for people who don’t like each other all that well, who want to spend as little time as possible in each other’s company, and Poe is hoping Finn won’t choose that option. He wants to spend a _lot_ of time in Finn’s company.

The second way is to swear blood-siblinghood. Poe suspects Finn will choose that one, though he holds out a glimmer of hope that maybe Finn will choose option three. But if Finn becomes Poe’s sibling, he’ll be Finn Dameron, second son of the Dameron household, entitled by law and custom to half the inheritance, to the rights and privileges granted any native child of Yavin 4, to everything Poe has in equal measure. If that’s what Finn chooses, Poe will bring him home the first chance he gets and introduce him to his - _their_ \- father and show him the house and grounds which are, legally and morally and culturally, half his.

But oh, Poe is hoping, with a guilty sort of desperate hope, that Finn will choose the third option. Because the third way to pay off a life debt, to give all you have and are and will be to the one who saved you, is to marry. And, okay, Poe has known Finn for all of - well, it’s less than a full day’s time, counting only waking hours. But in that time, Poe has learned that Finn is brave and tenacious, intelligent and resourceful, kind and honest and beautiful and burning with loyalty and compassion. If someone had sat Poe down and asked him to design his perfect lifemate, the person he wanted to spend whatever years remain to him beside - well, the resulting picture might have looked a lot like Finn, except for how there’s no way Poe could have imagined that glorious smile, that indomitable spirit, that soul of light in the midst of utter darkness.

Of course, Finn might be _smarter_ to choose blood-siblinghood. Poe isn’t quite as much of a catch as the young ex-Stormtrooper is. Oh, Poe knows he’s attractive enough - ‘pretty Poe Dameron’ is not a _new_ thing for him to overhear - and he’s brave and loyal and clever and far too prone to snarking when he should keep his mouth shut for his own good, but he’s also past thirty and as like as not isn’t going to make it to forty, not with a war on and him on the front lines. He’s never managed to have a real long-term relationship, either - never met someone who made his heartbeat trip over itself the way Finn does - and he’s obsessive about his droid and his X-Wing and his cause to the point of forgetting to take care of himself sometimes. He’s messy and takes kriffing forever to wake up in the mornings and drinks far too much caf and has a truly abominable sense of humor. Finn - Finn could do better.

But oh, Poe hopes he’ll be willing to settle. For Finn, Poe will learn to be the sort of husband Finn deserves, the sort of husband his father was to his mother, devoted and attentive and adoring. It won’t be hard. He’s already head over heels.

*

Finn wakes up three weeks after Starkiller Base was destroyed. By that point, Poe has basically moved his office - such as it is - into the medbay room beside Finn’s bunk, and he’s bent over the training logs of the half-dozen new pilots they’ve recruited since Starkiller - there will be more, he knows, as the repercussions of Hosnian’s destruction echo through the galaxy - trying to figure out which ones are good enough to put in the few beat-up unclaimed X-Wings they have without dying immediately. Hopefully, the influx of pilots he is anticipating will include an influx of ships, or he’s not sure if he’s even going to _have_ a squadron. The X-Wings on base are held together with spit and baling wire and prayers at this point, even his own beloved Black One. So Poe doesn’t notice right away when Finn’s eyes flicker open - but BB-8 does, and the little droid burbles an eager greeting that makes Poe’s head snap up.

Finn blinks at both of them, and BB-8 chirps eagerly and holds out its little lighter, flame flickering brightly in the dim medbay. Finn makes a hoarse noise that Poe realizes is a laugh, and turns his near hand to flash a thumbs-up at the droid, then smiles up at Poe. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey, buddy,” Poe replies, and realizes he has no idea what else to say or do. He’s planned for this, run over a thousand scenarios in his mind, and now they’ve all vanished like mist on a lake. For lack of any better idea, he picks up the glass of water he’s been drinking and offers it to Finn. “Thirsty?”

“Yes,” Finn says, and Poe nudges the lever to move the bed so it will help Finn sit up, hands him the glass of water and hovers nervously as Finn wraps both hands around it and drinks in slow, luxurious sips. He drains the glass before he hands it back to Poe with that bright, glorious smile. Poe had almost begun to believe that Finn’s smile couldn’t _really_ be that brilliant and beautiful, but nope, it really is. It’s like sunrise over the mountains on Yavin 4, sudden astonishing glory that lights the world. “Thanks,” Finn sighs.

“You’ve been out for three weeks,” Poe tells him. “Rey went off to find Luke Skywalker - sent word back that she got to him alright, but she’ll be there for a while, training. Starkiller Base is gone. The First Order hasn’t made any moves yet, and we’re still trying to get our feet back under us.”

“Three weeks?” Finn asks, astonished. “And I wasn’t decommissioned?”

Poe stares at him for a long minute until the words finally make sense, and then he makes a harsh noise and sits down, hard, in his chair. “Kriffing _hell_ ,” he says. “You saved us all, and you got hurt doing it - what sort of people would we be if we hadn’t healed you?” On impulse, he reaches over and takes Finn’s hand where it lies atop the covers, and Finn curls his fingers around Poe’s with a wide, sweet smile. “You’re important to me - to all of us,” Poe tells him, trying to make the words ring with their truth, so that Finn will believe them. “We don’t leave our own people behind - or discard them.”

Finn looks down at their clasped hands and sighs with something Poe can only read as vast contentment. “Thank you,” he says.

Then the doctors come in - but Poe stays by Finn’s side, fingers tangled with Finn’s, until Finn falls asleep, a true healing sleep this time, and BB-8 beeps the entirely accurate observation that it has been far too long since Poe took advantage of having an actual bed.

*

When Finn wakes up again, Poe is not at his bedside, but BB-8 is. The little droid beeps something that sure sounds like a joyful greeting, and Finn grins down at it.

“Hey,” he says happily. “Good to see you too. Where’s Poe, d’you know?”

This gets him a volley of explanatory beeping, of which he understands nothing. “I’m sorry,” he says when BB-8 winds down. “I don’t actually understand Binary.” BB-8 beeps something that sounds slightly rude, and Finn can’t help laughing. “I’ll learn as fast as I can,” he promises, and wins a happy beep for that.

There’s a knock on the doorframe, and then one of the doctors comes in - Kalonia, by her name-badge, and Finn thinks she might be the one he saw tending to Chewbacca, back before - everything. She smiles at him.

“Good morning, mister Finn,” she says cheerfully. “Good morning, BB-8. How are you feeling today?”

BB-8 chirps. Finn considers the question. The skin of his back is tight and sensitive, as though it’s been regrown - he kind of wishes he didn’t know what that sensation feels like, but such is life - and he’s as sore as he’d expect from being flat on a bed for what Poe said was three weeks, but otherwise - “I’m fully functional, Doctor,” he assures her. “Ready for duty.”

Doctor Kalonia gives him a look which bears a close kinship to the one Poe had given him, when he’d asked why he hadn’t been decommissioned. It’s...horror, Finn decides tentatively. How odd. But she rallies faster than Poe had, and says easily, “I’ll be the judge of that, young man,” before running him through a battery of tests. Finn _is_ fully healed, it turns out, if weak from long inactivity, and finally Doctor Kalonia nods and says, “Right then. I’ll want to you come back for physical therapy for at _least_ another three weeks, so we can get you up to your full strength safely and without reaggravating your injuries, but otherwise, you’re free to go.”

Finn wants to ask _where_ he should go - he doesn’t know anyone here except Poe and the General, after all, and he’s hardly going to ask the _General_ where his assigned quarters are - but BB-8 warbles glee and whirs back and forth between Finn and the door, clearly wanting Finn to follow it. Finn shrugs to himself, and does. The droid knows this base far better than _he_ does, after all.

BB-8 leads him through slightly dingy corridors - Phasma would have had a _fit_ , Finn thinks - to a largeish room full of people in brightly colored clothing. Some of them are lounging on the two ratty couches in the corners; others are gathered around a table, playing what looks like sabacc. Finn can’t help grinning. Finally, something _familiar_ in this strange new place.

BB-8 warbles at the top of its speakers as they enter, and every person in the room stops what they’re doing to turn and look at BB-8 and Finn. Finn pauses, sort of uncomfortable being the focus of so many eyes, and then a small, dark-haired woman and a larger, bearded man get up from the table and hurry toward him with wide grins on their faces.

“You must be Finn,” says the woman as she reaches him, and then, to Finn’s blank astonishment, she hugs him, brief and warm. The man holds out a hand when she lets go of him, so Finn takes it, a little awkwardly, and finds himself hauled into _another_ hug, this one one-armed and with rather more backslapping.

“I’m Jess Pava,” the woman says when the man has let go of Finn. “This is Snap Wexley. We’re some of Poe’s pilots. He got called away - a mission that absolutely _had_ to be him - but he asked us to look after you while he was gone, so,” she gestures proudly, “ta-daa! Here we are, looking out for you!”

“Jess, he’s about to fall over,” the man - Snap - says wryly, and puts a hand under Finn’s elbow, helping him across the room to a hastily-vacated corner of one of the couches. Finn sits down and sinks into the cushion rather more than he expected - it honestly feels a little like the thing is trying to swallow him. One of the couch’s other occupants grins at him, a man with skin as dark as Finn’s own.

“It does try and eat you, rather,” he says, and holds out a hand, which Finn takes gingerly. This time, though, no hug ensues, only a vigorous shake. “Bastian,” the man introduces himself. “Let me know when you want to get up and I’ll tell you the trick.”

“Thank you,” Finn says, smiling back.

“So anyway,” Jess says, sitting on the table in front of the couch, “Poe asked us to look out for you. He said to put you in his room - he’s got a spare bunk - and show you around, so we’ll do that once you’re a little steadier on your feet. In the meantime, got any questions?”

Finn has several _million_ questions, actually, but the first one he asks is, “Can someone teach me Binary, so I can understand BB-8?”

Snap grins down at him. “Sure!” he says happily. “I can do that.” He pats the little droid on the head, and BB-8 bumps against his legs affectionately. “Trade you, though.”

Finn tenses a little, wondering what the other man wants, until Snap adds, “I want the _real_ story of how you and Poe stole a TIE fighter. I’m pretty sure his version had some extras added!”

Finn can’t help laughing. “I can do that,” he agrees, and in moments he has pretty much every person in the room gathered around, sitting on the floor for lack of chairs. He takes a deep breath. “So, this was just after my very first mission, and I needed a pilot…”

*

Poe’s room, Finn learns when Jess and Snap walk him down to it, is surprisingly messy, but the spare bunk is uncluttered and freshly made and clean, with the jacket hanging on a hook beside it, the long cut down the back neatly mended. BB-8 beeps as proudly as though the whole setup was his doing - which it might have been, for all Finn knows.

“Get some rest, and we’ll come collect you for dinner,” Jess suggests.

Snap nods, and hands Finn the holopad he’d ducked into his own room to get a few moments earlier. “And if you can’t sleep, here’s a beginner’s primer for Binary,” he adds. “BB-8 can tell you if you mispronounce anything.”

BB-8’s beep is definitely affirmative.

“Thanks,” Finn says, and sits down on the neatly-made bed when they leave, looking over at the disorganized heap of flight suits and uniforms that takes up half of Poe’s bed, the half-opened drawers of the dresser with its little collection of tiny spaceship models on top - Finn can recognize X-Wing, A-Wing, TIE fighter, and, amusingly, a Corellian freighter than can only be the _Millennium Falcon_ \- and then raises an eyebrow at BB-8. “Poe doesn’t tidy much, does he?”

BB-8 beeps something Finn thinks is probably laughter, and Finn settles back against the wall in a position that doesn’t make his back hurt and starts reading through the Binary primer, the little droid tucked up under his feet where they hang off the edge of the bed and beeping commentary when he tries to mimic the basic sounds.

*

The mess hall, when Jess and Snap bring him to it, is startling for two reasons: the noise, and the variety of food. Finn is used to the mess halls in the First Order, which are always full of neat rows of armored Stormtroopers, their helmets stored tidily under their benches, eating their rations as quickly and efficiently as possible. Quiet talking is allowed, but anything loud enough to be a disturbance is grounds for punishment or - at worst - reconditioning.

The only thing that the Resistance does the same way is the benches. The people _on_ the benches are dressed in everything from flight suits to formal uniforms to clothes Finn doesn’t even know how to describe, in every color of the rainbow, and they are all talking and laughing and gesticulating over plates of - Finn doesn’t know what half of the foodstuffs _are_.

“You sit down, I’ll bring you a plate,” Snap says, and Jess tows Finn over to an empty place at one of the tables, near Bastian and a handful of other pilots Finn recognizes from his storytelling session. They make room happily, welcoming Finn eagerly, and a woman Finn doesn’t recognize leans across the table to shake his hand.

“Tabala Zo,” she introduces herself. “I was in the command center when you lot took out Starkiller - well done, and thank you.”

“It needed to be done,” Finn tells her, and she grins.

“Well, yes, but I still appreciate you saving my own, personal ass, you know,” she says cheerfully, and Finn can’t help laughing along with her. Then Snap slides a plate full of - something - in front of Finn, and Finn blinks down at it dubiously.

“Roast avian with chutney, fresh fruit salad, bread with herbs in it - damn, forgot to ask, you aren’t allergic to anything, are you?” Snap asks anxiously.

“Not that I know of,” Finn replies, and tries some of the roast avian. “Oh, _wow_.”

“We’ve got good cooks,” Snap says, sitting down in Jess’s vacated spot as she heads for the food line. “They do _wonders_ with what we manage to bring them.”

“Could I learn to do this?” Finn asks, trying the bread and then trying not to moan in pleasure. “I didn’t even know food _could_ taste like this!”

“Sure, you can learn to cook if you want to,” Snap says, shrugging. “Not from me, though. I burn salads.”

“He does, too,” Jess puts in, shoving Snap to one side so she can sit between him and Finn. “Budge over, you, I sat here first. I’ve seen him mess up hard-boiled eggs,” she adds to Finn, conspiratorily. “And they’re the easiest thing in the _galaxy_.”

“How do you mess up hard-boiled eggs?” Tabala asks, grinning.

“I have no kriffing clue, but they were unpeelable,” Jess explains. “It was the strangest thing.”

“Wow,” Tabala says. “I’m no gourmet chef, but I can make hard-boiled eggs.”

“Yeah, yeah, rub it in,” Snap grumbles, but he’s smiling. “I’ll remember this next time one of you needs a droid repaired.”

“...And make us pay in hard-boiled eggs?” Jess asks, laughing.

Finn, watching, feels strangely warm all over. He’s not _part_ of this, yet, this camaraderie and joy, but he’s not excluded, either, the way he was in the First Order, where everyone else had a nickname and he was too strange, too talented, too out of place to have one too. He might not understand their jokes, yet, but they’re all grinning at him as though they want him to share their amusement, and none of them find his eagerness to learn off-putting or strange, the way Nines always did, or too much like sucking up, the way Slip did. They just accept it.

“I’ll introduce you to the cooks,” Jess tells him once she stops laughing. “Snap’s banned from the kitchens. You can set up lessons with them once you know what _else_ you’re booked for.”

“Physical therapy,” Finn says, remembering. “And - I don’t know what else.”

“Well, we’re going to want to pick your brain for everything you know about the First Order,” Tabala says, gesturing eagerly with a fork. “Numbers, locations, policies - _anything_ you know, we need.”

“Of course I’ll tell you,” Finn says, relieved to know that there _is_ something he can do to be useful to these people, even now that Starkiller is gone. “Anything. Everything.”

“ _Awesome_ ,” Tabala enthuses, beaming.

“Don’t you overwork him,” Jess warns the other woman, only half in jest. “Poe said we were to look out for him, and we will.”

“I will treat him like my granny’s best china,” Tabala says dryly. “But we _do_ need that information.”

“Not disputing that,” Jess shrugs. “Just - he’s ours to look out for.”

“I hear you,” Tabala says, nodding.

Finn is very confused, but also rather - pleased? Pleased, yes. That there are people who seem to care about him, if only for Poe’s sake and at Poe’s request. It’s nice.

*

In the days that follow, Finn spends a lot of time in physical therapy - which isn’t fun, but is useful, and he’s used to working through pain - and just as much time sitting in conference rooms with the Resistance’s officers and telling them everything he can dredge out of his memory about the First Order, but he also has time - is _given_ time - to sit in a corner of the kitchen on a tall stool, so as not to overstrain his still-understrength muscles, and chop vegetables while the cooks explain what they are doing, and to sit quietly in Poe’s room (his, too, now) and read up on Binary while BB-8 corrects his pronunciation, and even just hang out in the pilots’ lounge with Jess and Snap and Bastian and the rest of the squadrons, and with Tabala when she can find time, and play sabacc and tell stories.

After a few days, Finn doesn’t feel like he’s only being welcomed for Poe’s sake anymore. Jess likes his sense of humor, and Snap likes to hear stories about the TIE fighter and the _Millennium Falcon_ , and Tabala likes to teach him new variants on sabacc and learn the ones _he_ knows, and Bastian likes to quiz him about the flora and fauna of the worlds he’s visited. The cooks seem to welcome his enthusiasm and eagerness to learn. BB-8, as far as Finn can tell with his slowly-developing fluency in Binary, thinks Finn is nearly as delightful as his Master-Poe and Droid-Saver-Rey, and Finn can only laugh and agree with _that_ ranking.

The days stretch on, and Finn is astonished to find that he feels like he has a _place_ here, in a way he never did among his fellow ‘troopers. People welcome him and make room on the bench in the mess hall. People in the corridors grin and wave when he passes, or clap him on the back. The officers asking him questions smile at him, and even the General seems to approve wholeheartedly of his eagerness to help. His side of Poe’s room starts to accumulate _stuff_ \- first uniforms from the Quartermaster, then small gifts from his new friends. A sabacc deck from Tabala. Half a dozen holobooks, romances and histories, from Jess. A toolkit from Snap, good for repairing droids and X-Wings alike. A sketch, from Bastian, of Poe leaning against his X-Wing, grinning rakishly.

Finn misses Poe almost like he thinks he’d miss a limb, every day that he wakes up to see the empty bed across the way - he did Poe’s laundry just as soon as he knew where the laundry room was, put it away with help from a vastly amused BB-8 - wishes Poe were there to sit with him in the mess hall and laugh with him in the pilots’ rec room and smile across the table while Finn gives information to the officers and help Finn back to his room after particularly grueling physical therapy sessions. He wants to know if Poe can cook, and how well, and what; what variations on sabacc Poe knows; what stories Poe can tell.

He wants to put food in front of Poe that _he_ made, and see Poe’s face when he tastes it. He wants to hear all of Poe’s stories for himself. He wants to find out if Poe’s hair is really as soft as it looks, and if Poe’s smile would taste as sweet as Finn suspects it would, and if Poe’s hugs are as nice as Finn remembers them being. He wants to wake up in his little bunk knowing that Poe is asleep across from him, near enough to touch.

Maybe it’s odd to miss a man in whose company he only spent a day - less, really - when he’s surrounded by so many new friends, but Finn can’t forget he owes every one of these people to Poe asking Jess and Snap to look after him, leaving BB-8 to herd him around, _caring_ about him like no one ever has, even when he has to be away. Finn is counting the days until Poe finally returns.

*

Poe is frankly exhausted when he finally makes it back to base. He’s got a three-day growth of beard and he probably smells like a bantha, but thankfully none of his information is _urgent_ , just important, and he’s used the last few hyper transits to type it all up, so he hands the ‘pad with it to the nearest runner and sends it on up to the General and heads for his quarters, intending to faceplant onto his bed and not move for at least ten hours.

He’s mildly surprised, through the fog of exhaustion, to find his bed clear of dirty laundry - he’s pretty sure he left it heaped there before he headed out, slob that he is - but maybe Jess or Snap took pity on him. In any case, it’s his bed, it’s clean, and he toes off his boots and shucks the flight suit, leaving it in a heap by the foot of the bed, and flops down into the blessed softness of the mattress, and is asleep before his head hits the pillow.

He wakes up to a soft conversation going on across the room, which is slightly unusual, and lies there in drowsy confusion for a few minutes, listening.

“...do you think he’s going to sleep?” a soft, deep voice asks.

{Master-Poe will sleep as long as he sleeps,} BB-8 replies. {Master-Poe is very bad at sustaining a routine cycle of dormancy.}

The deep voice laughs, quietly. “Good to know,” he says, and Poe’s fuzzy mind makes the connection: Finn. Of course. Finn, who Poe had said should have his spare bunk. When did he learn Binary?

Poe rolls over and blinks blearily across the room at where Finn is sitting cross-legged beside his own bunk, facing BB-8. “Hey, buddy,” he rasps.

Finn looks up and _beams_ , and Poe’s heart trips in his chest. Dear Force, how had he managed to forget - _again_ \- how stunningly beautiful this man is?

“Poe!” he says, delighted. “Hi!”

“Hi,” Poe says, smiling sort of stupidly at his - his friend, for now, maybe someday more than that - and then takes a deep breath and smells himself. “Wow. Okay, I’m so sorry, I’m going to go take a shower and then maybe we can talk without you suffocating,” he says, and rolls out of bed to stumble into the little private refresher that his rank entitles him to, to the beautiful sound of Finn’s laughter.

When he comes out, there’s a mug of caf steaming gently on the dresser. He blinks at it in confusion. Finn’s sitting on his bunk, reading a holopad, and looks up to smile at Poe’s bafflement. “BB-8 told me how you like it,” he explains.

“Buddy, you are a _marvel_ ,” Poe tells him, and drains the mug, ignoring the heat in favor of the perfect taste. “ _Thank_ you.”

“BB-8 said you usually need caf in the mornings - that or an all-hands alarm,” Finn says merrily, and puts his holopad aside and gets up and hugs Poe hard, not caring that the only thing Poe is wearing is a towel. “I’ve _missed_ you.”

Poe hugs back just as hard. “I have missed the _hell_ out of you, buddy,” he admits. “How have you _been_?”

“Really good,” Finn admits. “Jess and Snap and Bastian and Tabala have been looking out for me, like you asked them to, and I’ve been learning Binary and how to cook, and my physical therapy’s almost done, and the General says I’ve given them - how did she put it - ‘a great deal of useful and actionable intelligence,’ that was it. How have _you_ been?”

“Bored when I wasn’t terrified, and terrified when I wasn’t bored,” Poe admits. “C’mon down to the mess hall with me and I’ll tell you all about it - but I want to hear all _your_ stories, too, because it sounds like you’ve been having a _much_ better time than I have!”

{Friend-Finn has been laughing a lot,} BB-8 contributes happily. {Friend-Finn learns fast!}

“Yeah?” Poe asks, grinning down at his droid. “And you’ve been taking good care of him, right?”

“BB-8’s been taking the _best_ care of me,” Finn agrees as BB-8 beeps proudly. “It’s been great.”

“It’s a protective little thing,” Poe says, patting his droid on the head, and Finn laughs.

“Yeah, I know. First time I met it, it tazered me,” he says.

“BB! You didn’t!” Poe is horrified.

“I was wearing your jacket and it didn’t know who I was,” Finn says, patting Poe’s shoulder soothingly. “Once I explained, we got on better.”

{I have given Friend-Finn an apology already,} BB-8 adds. {I was operating on insufficient data. Further data confirms Friend-Finn is friend.}

“Well,” Poe says, mollified. “Alright.”

“I really can’t blame BB-8,” Finn says, nudging Poe’s shoulder with his own. “I’d have tazed me, in its place. And anyone who wants to protect you is okay is far as I’m concerned.”

Poe can’t help grinning at him for that, wide and probably sort of sappy but - kriff it, Poe’s so gone on this man it’s not even funny. And everyone already _knows_ that, Jess started teasing him about his beautiful ex-Stormtrooper pretty much the day after Poe got back from the Jakku mission, so there’s no point in Poe trying to hide how he feels. Which is something of a relief, because he doesn’t think he could.

*

After breakfast - well, technically it’s lunch, but Poe just woke up, so it’s breakfast for _him_ \- Poe has to go give his report in person, and Finn apparently has physical therapy, but they meet up again for dinner, which Finn has apparently helped _make_ , dear Force how does he keep getting more appealing? And after dinner Poe ends up in the rec room, flopped out on the couch that eats people (and thank you for that _charming_ nickname, Bastian), watching Finn play sabacc with Jess and Snap and Tabala Zo from command and Bollie Prindel from the ground crew, BB-8 rolling back and forth between Poe and Finn like it can’t decide who it wants to be next to, and thinks that he is pretty much completely content.

And then Finn finishes his current game and comes over to sit next to Poe, and the couch promptly tips him over so he’s leaning against Poe, and says, “So, what can you tell us about your mission?”

“Not much, and mostly it was boring as hell,” Poe says. “What have _you_ been up to?” Upon which he’s treated to a short and utterly endearing monologue on how _nice_ everyone is, and how much Finn has been learning, and what Finn’s new favorite foods are. Jess grins over at them from the sabacc table.

“We took good care of your boy, Dameron,” she calls over when Finn winds down. “Not that he needed much looking after once he got his feet under him.”

“Yeah, Pava, I can see that,” Poe tells her. “Thanks.”

“Everyone was _wonderful_ ,” Finn says earnestly. “Thank you for that.”

“It was - my pleasure,” Poe says softly, and basks in the smile that earns him. Wow. Just...wow.

*

They don’t spend all day, every day together - they have duties, after all - but Poe does manage to carve out enough time to have at least one meal with Finn most days, and also Finn asks _Poe_ to help him learn how to fix X-Wings. He could easily have asked any of the other pilots - they would have been exquisitely happy to help - but, Finn explains, shrugging, he wanted to learn this from Poe because Poe loves flying so much.

Poe very nearly kisses him on the spot.

Every hour he spends in Finn’s company strengthens Poe’s conviction that he wants to spend the rest of his life - however long that might be - at Finn’s side. Finn lights up any room he walks into. He learns fast - almost terrifyingly so, he’s already as fluent in Binary as Poe himself and he’s gotten pretty good in the kitchen, too, and once Poe starts showing him how the insides of an X-Wing work, he picks that up at an astonishing pace. He laughs easily, and makes other people laugh with almost equal ease.

Finn is beautiful, inside and out. He’s a source of light - of Light - and Poe wants to bask in it like a lizard in the Jakku sunshine. And to his immense pleasure, Finn seems to reciprocate at least some of the affection Poe has for him. He seeks Poe out whenever he can; he prefers to sit near Poe, to lean against his shoulder, to hold hands when possible, and he doesn’t act like that with any of his other friends on base.

But there’s a conversation Poe has been putting off, and after a week or so he really can’t, in good conscience, do so any longer, so he pulls Finn aside after dinner one night, out to the far edge of the hangar where no one will bother them, and sits there watching the stars until he’s gotten the courage up, and then he explains, as carefully and completely as he can, about life debts, and the options Finn has available to him.

“Poe,” says Finn quietly when Poe is done, “you don’t owe me anything.”

“I really do,” Poe replies evenly. “I really, _really_ do.”

“But -” Finn flails for a moment, then scrubs a hand over his face. “But _marriage_?”

Poe shrugs. “It’s...you don’t have to. It’s completely up to you. Marriage, or blood-brotherhood, or the assessed value of my life. It’s not my choice, though I know what I _would_ choose.”

“Augh,” says Finn faintly. “Okay, look, I need to think about this, and I can’t answer you right now. Okay?”

“Take your time,” Poe tells him, and tries hard not to wince when Finn hugs him hard and then gets up and walks away, discomfort in every stride. “So, BB, how bad did I mess that up?”

BB-8 bloops thoughtfully. {Master-Poe should not panic yet,} it declares at last.

“Thanks,” Poe sighs. “That’s reassuring.”

*

“Jess,” Finn hisses, snagging her elbow gently as she goes by, “can I talk to you?”

Jess startles a little, but she follows him away from the cluster of other pilots with a willing shrug. “Sure. What’s eating you? You don’t look so hot.”

Finn grimaces. “Poe - he said - he owes me a life debt.”

“Finally got around to telling you, did he?” Jess says, shaking her head. “Yeah, I know.”

“He said - he said,” Finn waves his hands a little frantically. “I don’t want to choose marriage and then learn he didn’t really want to, but I don’t want to _not_ marry him if I _could_ have him!” he blurts at last. To his surprise, Jess laughs.

“Finn, honey, don’t panic. If Poe didn’t want to marry you, he’d have asked you to accept the money or the blood oath. He’s not shy about turning people down, and not even his damned overblown sense of honor would make him marry someone he didn’t love. But I have been friends with him for the better part of a decade, and I gotta tell you, I have _never_ seen him so very gone on someone as he is on you.”

Finn relaxes a little. “You’re sure?”

Jess grins. “Look, while you were out, every other word out of his mouth was your name. He told us the story of you rescuing him so many times I could recite it in my _sleep_. And I don’t know how, but he’s gotten worse since then. When you’re not here, the only things he talks about are you, Black One, BB-8, and the Resistance. When you _are_ here, well - you’ve seen how he looks at you. That’s not the life debt. That’s Poe Dameron being so madly in love he can’t tear his eyes away from you.”

“Er,” says Finn, thinking of some of the romance holobooks Jess has lent him. “So…”

“He’d probably want to marry you even without the life debt,” Jess confirms, shrugging. “It just gives him an excuse to get off of his admittedly very nice ass and do something about that desire, instead of pining away for weeks the way we all know he would otherwise.”

Finn can’t help laughing. “It _is_ a very nice ass.”

“It is a _magnificent_ ass,” Jess says, smirking. “Which I presume you know perfectly well, since you’re rooming with him. So. Gonna put the poor, pining idiot out of his misery and marry him, or make him wait a while to teach him not to put off telling you important things?”

Finn grins at her. “Life is short,” he says quietly. “I’m going to marry him as soon as I kriffing well can.”

“Good,” Jess tells him firmly, hugs him hard, and then shoves him towards the door. “Go get your man, then, hero! You know he’s off thinking up the worst scenario he can.”

Finn sighs ruefully. “Yeah, he probably is,” he agrees, squares his shoulders, and heads off to find Poe and - hopefully - not kriff this up too badly.

*

Poe is starting to wonder if he should head back to his rooms, if it’s going to take Finn days, maybe even weeks to make up his mind - which is totally fair, Poe has had the better part of two months to think about this, and Finn has had maybe two _hours_ \- but Poe is going to need to find something to distract himself in that case so he doesn’t go stark raving mad. Flying. Lots of flying. And there’s half a dozen X-Wings that could really use a good in-depth look to make sure they’re in fighting shape. And he’s almost certainly behind on his paperwork, because he’s always behind on everything but the actually urgent stuff. And one of the new pilots is being a little shit about _something_ , but he shuts up every time Poe comes by - Poe needs to corner him and sit on him until he spits it out, or possibly have Bastian do that, since the kid is technically in Bastian’s section.

And then Finn comes around the corner, and Poe’s breath catches in his throat, because Finn is smiling like a sunrise, like that perfect moment when Poe knows he’s pulled off an impossible maneuver, like - like a man in love.

Finn sits down next to Poe, leans against his shoulder like this is any perfectly normal conversation, and says, softly, “Jess says you love me.”

“Jess is entirely too observant for my own good,” Poe sighs. “Yes. I love you.”

“Good,” says Finn, and Poe turns to blink at him. “It would be depressing to be the only one in love,” Finn explains, and Poe can’t really help leaning across the scant inches between them and kissing his beloved, very gently. Finn kisses back.

“So,” Finn says after a little while, breath warm against Poe’s lips, “that offer of marriage still open?”

“Kriff yes,” Poe says hoarsely.

“And then,” Finn says slowly, “there’ll be no debt between us. Just...you, and me, in love.”

“...I don’t deserve you,” Poe marvels, pulling away a little so he can really _look_ at Finn. “I really, really don’t deserve you, you wonderful man. Yes. Once we’re married, I’ll count my debt paid, and there will be nothing binding us but love.”

“Good,” says Finn, sounding very satisfied. “How soon can we get married?”

Poe kisses him again for that, and then again because Finn tastes so damned good, and again because Finn makes a sort of soft purring sound in the back of his throat that Poe wants to hear again as many times as possible, and by the time BB-8 warbles a warning that other people are nearby and they should probably move this scintillating conversation to their room, Poe has almost forgotten the question - but not quite.

“Tomorrow,” he says, as Finn gives him a hand to his feet and then throws that arm around his shoulders. “BB-8, take the General a message for me, will you - ask if she can fit us in tomorrow.” He grins at Finn. “And then, when the war is over, I’ll take you home and we’ll do it again _properly_ , with flowers and my whole kriffing family there and a feast bigger than you’ve ever seen.”

“I like the way you think,” Finn says contentedly, and steers Poe towards their room as BB-8 goes whirring off towards the command center as fast as his gyros will take him.

“Buddy, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” Poe says, grinning, and loops an arm around Finn’s waist, and revels in the way that makes Finn smile.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a tumblr at imaginarygolux.tumblr.com! Do please drop by and say hi.


End file.
